YouTube releases 60fps live streaming in gaming push

YouTube is stepping into the gaming market it seems, ratcheting up its offering to include 60fps live streaming, at 720p and 1080p – it also now has HTML5 playback.

Last October the video site announced a whole raft of new features that would come on stream, including analytics, more royalty-free audio files, and better use of collaborators.

But then, and now, all we really cared about was when 60fps video, and now live-streaming, would start up.

The only drawback is that, at this stage, the higher frame rate is only supported as part of an early preview for HTML5-compatible browsers.

“When you start a live stream on YouTube at 60fps, we’ll transcode your stream into 720p60 and 1080p60, which means silky smooth playback for gaming and other fast-action videos,” YouTube explained in a statement.

“We’ll also make your stream available in 30fps on devices where high frame-rate viewing is not yet available, while we work to expand support in the coming weeks.”

A couple of new games are already supported, with HTML5 playback also announced.

“As of this week, YouTube live streams will use a HTML5 player in supported browsers,” YouTube said. “And because our HTML5 player supports variable speed playback, you can skip backward in a stream while it’s live and watch at 1.5x or 2x speed to catch back up.”